The Treasure of Lei Fong Wu

Chapter Fifty-One

35th TAU -48:40

The new “headquarters” was hardly worthy of the name. It made the cafeteria they had vacated seem spacious. But the White Tigers of the 34th had no problem making-do; the unit was famed for its adeptness with improvisation. The room was a largish space, part workshop, part office, for the maintenance of the cooling system array they were now within. All around them pipes hissed and steamed with excess heat from the huge reactor several decks overhead. It also shielded them from passive detection: both the complex network of cooling apparatus and the radiation shielding from the reactor kept sensors from penetrating this particular space.

The men had made their camp on the machine shop side of the room, while he took the office for his own. The prisoners they had scattered over three decks. This section had no end to odd little rooms built around the huge cylindrical reactor, and he knew better than to confine them all in one space. That’s how escapes happened.

His sergeant approached with a bow, followed by three new men. He wrinkled his brow – the sergeant was to have awakened more than thirty by now.

“Major!” the sergeant said as he was beckoned forward. “I have come to report an issue with the hibernation chamber. The capsules are refusing to open as directed. They have come online one at a time, and only one an hour. I left two of the men at the chamber, one to guard and one to assist in the revivification. These three are ready to claim their billets and report for duty.”

“Only one an hour? Explain this delay!”

“Sir! The capsules are ultimately controlled by the central computer. They seem to be responding to a program issuing from the computer, and cannot be overridden with local controls.”

“Unacceptable! At this rate it will take weeks to reawaken our comrades!”

“Sir! One of the men I left has some experience in these matters. He said he would try to determine the programmed cause and issue a bypass